junk mail from Planner Pads Co.

This is a first for me. I've started getting productivity junk mail. It is from the Planner Pad company. They have a 6 month guarantee that "Now you can get at least ONE MORE HOUR of productive time each day GUARANTEED."

The picture of their planner shows 2 pages per week. The top third is room for all your major things you need to get done. Similar to the "Roles" and "Big Rocks" idea in the Covey system. The middle third is daily todo list. The bottom third is appointments that are for set times.

Over on the side is room for notes/calls and then expenses. And there's a little calendar of the current month and next month over on the side too.

I like the idea of seeing everything I have coming up for the week all at once. I'd consider buying one of these if I hadn't already got hooked on Circa notebooks. I may have to start working on making my own template :-)

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In my "inbox" ... (which is just nasty right now. don't get me started ;P) I think I have that exact piece of mail! heheh I feel like calling them... "I want my hour now ... I have lots to do because I'm a pet-a-holic."

I'm sure you could think of a nice hack... circa plus the all-in-one view you like. :D

I have been thinking about this for a while, even before spotting this format. I am thinking that a 2-page per week format is best (what I currently use) with a left-to-right focus, rather than a top-to-bottom planning focus.

it makes sense. We are taught to read from left to right, not top to bottom. So our eyes naturally run that course. I do like the sections that this planner breaks it into also. More basic and I can adapt to my life (which is not fancy or business based)

edited: i just re-read what i wrote. of course we read top to bottom too LOL but you guys knew what i meant.

Planner Pads are the best paper scheduling system that I've ever used. Unfortunately, it just became harder and harder for me to justify a full paper scheduling platform when I need to use Outlook also. So, I moved away from it a year or so back and really just used notebooks/task lists in conjunction with my Outlook.

But, if you're looking for a paper-based calendar option, I can't recommend this system enough. I'm surprised that others haven't copied the system yet.

I saw a site recently that had a 'heat-map' of a page of textual information gleaned from a study on eye-movements. The researchers showed differing page layouts to test subjects while a camera of some sort tracked their eye motions at high speed. The best retention of information on the page corresponded to an "F" shape that was strong at the top left, across the top, again across the middle, and then almost no looks directed at the bottom right corner. (no I do not have the site!!) I have been thinking how to incorporate that research into my design.

This is officially a Project now, as I am getting motivated. I'll post the progress as it comes along.

right within OOo. It works fine on my Mac in NeoOffice I just drag the zip file to my application icon, and it opens. I presume the same should work on a PC or *nix box. It might also work from the open file dialog within OOo.

If I must get junk mail, I'd rather get junk mail about planners than most of the other junk mail I get. Along the lines of the "people who buy paper planning supplies" marketing category, for a while I was seeing those "$15 off an order of $75" for Levenger and Circa products all over the place online.

I wonder if I just notice it more now that I've started using those products or what? Whatever the case, the Circa ads are much better than the match.com or Clevelandjobs.com ad with the guy doing the jumping jacks.

Planner Pads are the best paper scheduler around. It is simple in that what you plan on doing that day or week can be seen for the most part without flipping through all the categories. I've tried Daytimers and Covey but I've come back to the simple life.
At the top of the page you brainstorm all of your to do's. You can even set your categories at the column head as I did. In the midsection you prioritize those ideas by the day and by their importance. You then schedule them by the hour at the bottom of the page.

I tried Planner Pads, and really liked the system, but there were 2 drawbacks: 1) I work in an office which uses Outlook for scheduling (meetings etc), and 2) I like the Levenger Circa system. So I also created my own format similar to the Planner Pad, for use in my Circa notebook.

As an MS Office guy, it's all in Excel, and I didn't take the time to figure out how to automatically fill in the dates. So I create quarterly files and update them manually, which is semi-painful but not terrible.

The format is basically this:
- Top section: replicates the Planner Pad, with capture lists that can be labeled based on what I'm working on that week (usually project names). I also have one list (top/right) labeled "Personal" and colored yellow, where I write down personal stuff to be done that week.

- Middle section: instead of a calendar, this is a daily task list. I look at the top section for items to be done and put the specifics down in this section, usually on a day-by-day basis. Any quick task (return phone call, e.g.) also gets jotted down here

- Bottom section: I call it Daily Notes and it's divided into 3 sections:
o Goals - typically project launches
o Commitments - here I write down my meeting schedule for the day
o Other - other daily notes, like "wife is traveling"

I've been using it for about 18 months and find it very useful. If you're interested I can email you the Excel file for others to try out.

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I've been using the smallest size, wirebound, for meal plans, for several years. Also used it on and off for general time mgmt. I like the layout and the feel of the paper quite well. The zipper binder which I popped for a couple-three yrs ago is very nice quality; I like it quite well. They also sell a clear pocket for the inside of the front cover (i.e. the cover of the wire-bound pad), and another one designed for inside the rear cover, and I routinely order those now too.

One great feature of the PlannerPad layout is: every day of the week has the same amount of space!!! So many formats give short shrift to saturday and sunday. Some of us have just as much to keep track of on week-ends as on weekdays!

Note that the Planner Pad comes in three sizes! The larger sizes have more lines!

I know you're anonymous & all, but if you come back here, I'd really like to hear more about how you use this format for meal planning. Do you keep a shopping list at the top? How do you use it, exactly?

The headers across the top are labeled with categories of foods I want to use:
Vegan, Fish/Sea, Poultry, Meat on the left, and
Veg's, Salad, Fruits, Other on the right.

The middle array (dated) is what I intend to fix for each particular day.

The bottom array (dated)is what I did fix for that day.

The space in the lower right corner is To Buy. That's where I and DH write things we are running low on.

Also, sometimes I partition off part of the upper right space, just above To Buy, and label it Ideas.

On the empty pages at the back, I taped in the ingredients for the favorite recipes in my rotation. They are WordPerfect tables, formatted to print just a bit smaller than the MPP page size, then I tape them in with removable tape. That way I can tear them out and replace when I want to tinker with my rotation, or to transfer to the new book in early January.

When the system is functioning at its best (i.e. when I am functioning at my best), I plan 4 or 5 meals on a piece of paper 8.5 x 5.5, recipe name & cookbk & page number on the left, groceries to buy on the right. That paper gets clipped or taped onto the month sheet, and upon returning home the foods I bought are written in, the meals I intend for each night are written in, and I would normally not need to refer back to the menu/grocery paper, but it's there in the MPP if I need to look at it.

I have to admit I have a lot of trouble with the whole planning, buying, cooking process. Some people do it in their heads or on any old pc of scrap paper. When I plan with a system like this, I do a better job of buying what I will cook, and cooking what I did buy. But I do have trouble being consistent.

I suppose it is inefficient to have a separate planner for meals. (I have too many notebooks. Seem to crave them.)

We are retired, so the MPP sits open on the kitchen counter. If I were employed, perhaps I'd need meal plans and groceries in my primary planner which wd be with me at all times.

For me, the best way to use this system is to actually make meal plans and then take the plans and the MPP to the grocery store. Second best is to at least grab the MPP on the way out the door, maybe write a list on the run or upon arrival at the store, or at least write in "sliced mushrooms" in the vegetable column when I put them in the groc cart. Then, later, if I can look at the vegetable column and see sliced muwshrooms and carrots etc, I kind of know I need to cook up the mushrms within a day or two, figure out a recipe using mushrooms asap, and the carrots will keep.

Planner Pads makes a nice paper planner, but after using them for a few years, I found out that they have NASTY customer service. I made a mistake ordering online and ordered the larger size. When I opened the box I called and left a message on their machine asking for a return label so I could send it back and get the smaller size. The manager left me a message suggesting that I had ordered the wrong size because I only use their competitor's products. When I spoke to them a few days later, they refused to give me a return label because they said that if they did it for me they would have to do it for everybody (exactly! that's good customer service), and that it was my mistake. I never expected a company with such good products to be so nasty to their customers. Bad customer service is not worth good products.

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